like inside of here but for goodnessâ sakes no booze. Pop throws fits if any of the players drink.â
Roy stood the bassoon case in upright. âGot a lock for the door?â
âNobody locks their doors here. Before the game you deposit your valuables in that trunk there and I will lock them up.â
âOkay, skip it.â
Dizzy excused himself to get back to his paper and Roy began to undress.
The locker room was tomblike quiet. The pitcher who had been in the showersâhis footsteps were still wet on the floor
âhad dressed rapidly and vanished. As he put his things away,
Roy found himself looking around every so often to make sure he was here. He was, all right, yet in all his imagining of how it would be when he finally hit the majors, he had not expected to feel so down in the dumps. It was different than he had thought it would be. So different he almost felt like walking out, jumping back on a train, and going wherever people went when they were running out on something. Maybe for a long rest in one of those towns he had lived in as a kid. Like the place where he had that shaggy mutt that used to scamper through the woods, drawing him after it to the deepest, stillest part, till the silence was so pure you could crack it if you threw a rock. Roy remained lost in the silence till the dogâs yapping woke him, though as he came out of it, it was not barking he heard but the sound of voices through the trainerâs half-open door.
He listened closely because he had the weird impression that he knew all the voices in there, and as he sorted them he recognized first the trainerâs brogue and then a big voice that he did not so much recall, as remember having heard throughout his lifeâa strong, rawboned voice, familiar from his boyhood and some of the jobs he had worked at later, and the different places he had bummed around in, slop joints, third-rate hotels, prize fight gyms and such; the big voice of a heavy, bull-necked, strong-muscled guy, the kind of gorilla he had more than once fought half to death for no reason he could think of. Oh, the Whammer, he thought, and quickly ducked but straightened up when he remembered the Whammer was almost fifty and long since retired out of the game. But what made him most uneasy was a third voice, higher than the other two, a greedy, penetrating, ass-kissing voice he had definitely heard before. He strained his ears to hear it again but the big voice was talking about this gag he had pulled on Pop Fisher, in particular, spraying white pepper in Popâs handkerchief, which made him sneeze and constantly blow his beak. That commenced an epidemic of base
stealing, to Popâs fury, because the signal to steal that day was for him to raise his handkerchief to his schnozzle.
At the end of the story there was a guffaw and a yelp of laughter, then the trainer remarked something and this other voice, one that stood on stilts, commented that Bump certainly got a kick out of his jokes, and Bump, he must have been, said Pop wouldnât agree to his release, so if he was going to be stuck in this swamp he would at least have a little fun.
He laughed loudly and said, âHereâs one for your colyum, kid. We were in Cincy in April and had a free day on our hands because this exhibition game was called off, so in the Plaza lobby that morning we get to bulling about players and records, and you know Pop and this line of his about how lousy the modern player is compared to those mustached freaks he played with in the time of King Tut. He was saying that the average fielder nowadays could maybe hit the kangaroo ball we gotâhe was looking at meâbut you couldnât count on him to catch a high fly. âHow high?â I ask him, innocent, and he points up and says, âAny decent height. They either lose them in the sun or misjudge them in the wind.â So I say, âCould you catch the real high ones, Pop?â And he
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